The Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery was a contemporary art gallery originally located in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, USA. It played an important part in setting the stage for

' emergence as an international art center in the 1980s. It opened in 1982 and eventually closed in 1993 but it was preceded by

Jancar Kuhlenschmidt Gallery Jancar Kuhlenschmidt Gallery was a contemporary art gallery located in Los Angeles, California, that was open from May 1980 through June 1982. Overview Tom Jancar inspired by Claire Copley Gallery, which had closed in 1977, opened Jancar Kuhlensc ...

that put down most of the ground work for what would follow.

History

Tom Jancar and Richard Kuhlenschmidt opened

in 1980. The

was located in the basement of the historic Los Altos Apartments on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The gallery measured 8’ x 14’. The gallery was responsible for showing Los Angeles artists

David Askevold David Askevold (30 March 1940 – 23 January 2008) was born in Montana and was an experimental artist who lived in Nova Scotia. Askevold studied art and anthropology at the University of Montana. In 1963, he won a Max Beckmann Scholarship to stud ...

, William Leavitt, and Christopher Williams (artist) as well as NY artists

Louise Lawler Louise Lawler (born 1947) is a U.S. artist and photographer living in Brooklyn, New York City.Louise L ...

and

Richard Prince Richard Prince (born August 6, 1949) is an American painter and photographer. In the mid-1970s, Prince made drawings and painterly collages that he has since disowned. His image ''Untitled (Cowboy)'', a photographic reproduction of a photograph ...

who are part of

the Pictures Generation ''The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984'' was an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City that ran from April 29 – August 2, 2009. The exhibition took its name from ''Pictures'', a 1977 five person group show organ ...

artists.

closed in 1982. Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery began in 1982 and continued to focus on

, most of these artists contacts were introduced during the

period, they are as follows

Sherrie Levine Sherrie Levine (born 1947) is an American photographer, painter, and conceptual artist. Some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers such as Walker Evans, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston. Ea ...

James Welling James Welling (born 1951 in Hartford, Connecticut) is an American artist, photographer and educator living in New York City. He attended Carnegie-Mellon University where he studied drawing with Gandy Brodie and at the University of Pittsburgh where ...

Matt Mullican Matt Mullican (born September 18, 1951) is an American artist and educator. He is the child of artists Lee Mullican and Luchita Hurtado. Mullican lives and works in both Berlin and New York City. Early life and education Matt Mullican was bo ...

Allan McCollum Allan McCollum (born 4 August 1944) is a contemporary American artist who lives and works in New York City. In 1975, his work was included in the Whitney Biennial, and he moved to New York City the same year. In the late 1970s, he became especial ...

and James Casebere in addition to

Douglas Huebler Douglas Huebler (October 27, 1924 – July 12, 1997) was an American conceptual artist. Life and career Douglas Huebler grew up in rural Michigan during the Depression and served in the Marines in World War II. After the war, funded by the ...

, one of the pioneers of conceptual art. Known for showing "art that was very difficult to sell", Kuhlenschmidt's gallery was described at the time as "the only gallery in Los Angeles devoted to showing artists who are principally influenced by intellectual and conceptual concerns." In 1985, Kuhlenschmidt sponsored a benefit exhibition for AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) in tribute to friend and colleague Joe Bishop, a prominent writer and critic, whose death from AIDS had recently rocked the art world. The “Joe Bishop AIDS Benefit” exhibition included work by

John Baldessari John Anthony Baldessari (June 17, 1931 – January 2, 2020) was an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lived and worked in Santa Monica and Venice, California. Initially a paint ...

Ross Bleckner Ross Bleckner (born May 12, 1949) is an American artist. He currently lives and works in New York City. His artistic focus is on painting, and he held his first solo exhibition in 1975. Some of his art work reflected on the AIDS epidemic. Early ...

Robert Longo Robert Longo (born January 7, 1953) is an American artist, filmmaker, photographer and musician. Longo became first well known in the 1980s for his ''Men in the Cities'' drawing and print series, which depict sharply dressed men and women writ ...

David Salle David Salle (born September 28, 1952; last name pronounced "Sally") is an American Postmodern painter, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma, and lives and works in East Hampton, New York. He earned a B ...

Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...

and

Eric Fischl Eric Fischl (born March 9, 1948) is an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, draughtsman and educator. He is known for his paintings depicting American suburbia from the 1970s and 1980s. Life Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on s ...

. Kuhlenschmidt moved his gallery to

Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

in 1988 as that city became a magnet for the burgeoning local art scene. In 1990, the gallery featured a major overview of works by the Viennese architectural firm,

Coop Himmelb(l)au Coop Himmelb(l)au (a pun meaning '' Coop Sky Building'' and ''Coop Sky Blue'') is an architecture, urban planning, design and art firm founded in 1968 by Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky and Michael Holzer in Vienna, Austria. History Coop Hi ...

, which included a symposium “Welcome to the Millenium: Architecture Strikes Back” that included Wolf Prix of Coop Himmelblau, as well as notable Los Angeles architects

Thom Mayne Thom Mayne (born January 19, 1944) is an American architect. He is based in Los Angeles. In 1972, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he is a trustee and the coordinator of the Design of Cities po ...

Michael Rotondi Michael Rotondi (born June 26, 1949) is an American architect and educator. He has been a member of two international practices (Morphosis from 1976-1991, and RoTo Architects 1991–present, which he founded). He attended the Southern Californi ...

and Eric Moss. The symposium was moderated by architect Christian Hubert and included architectural critics Aaron Betsky and Leon Whiteson. When the recession hit in 1991, Kuhlenschmidt reduced the size of his gallery from 4,000 square feet to 1,700. The gallery closed its doors in 1993. The gallery’s archives are currently stored in the Smithsonian

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...

Artists

Significant artists previously represented by the Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery include: * Cindy Bernard *

Barbara Bloom (artist) Barbara Bloom (born 1951) lives and works in New York City. She is a conceptual artist best known for her multi-media installation works. Bloom is loosely affiliated with a group of artists referred to as The Pictures Generation. For nearly twen ...

Louise Lawler Louise Lawler (born 1947) is a U.S. artist and photographer living in Brooklyn, New York City.Louise L ...

* William Leavitt *

Robin Winters Robin Winters (born 1950 in Benicia, California) is an American conceptual artist and teacher based in New York. Winters is known for creating solo exhibitions containing an interactive durational performance component to his installations, some ...

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official Gallery Website
Art museums and galleries in Los Angeles Art museums and galleries established in 1982 Defunct art museums and galleries in California